Maggot Moon (10 page)

Every day I went to school and every day I came home hoping Hector would be better. Then the fever broke and Mrs. Lush said that he had finally turned the corner.

I didn’t know there were corners in illness.

The weather too changed. It stopped raining. Hector was allowed out of bed as long as he took it easy. Hector never took anything easy. It wasn’t Hector’s way. By this time the flying saucer was all but finished. We had collected all the newspapers we could find and given the spacecraft a protective coat of papier-mâché. It fitted the two of us and we sat on cushions in the middle with a control panel made out of old tops and cans.

I tell you, I believed with every part of me that in the next week or so Hector and me would be out of there on our own mission to planet Juniper.

Hector was distant. I asked what the matter was and he said nothing. Maybe the illness had taken more out of him than I thought. But I had never seen him like this. I wondered what I had done wrong.

As we walked home on his first day back at school, he said, “Standish, you should ignore bullies. Don’t play their games. That’s what the creeps want you to do.”

“I don’t,” I said. “Anyway, it’s OK now you’re back.”

He was silent a long time.

Then he said, “Don’t count on it.”

That afternoon we all sat down for tea. It was a bright evening, and kicking a ball around wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Gramps was bringing some boiled potatoes to the table when he asked, “Where’s the football? I haven’t seen it for a while.”

I was about to say that we — or rather I — had kicked it over the wall when Hector said, “I’ll get it.”

I stopped eating. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry. Not after Hector came in with the red football, for I knew it meant he had been through the air-raid shelter tunnel and had seen what was on the other side of that wall.

Mrs. Lush and Gramps seemed to be unaware of what Hector had done. Only Mr. Lush looked like he knew.

That night when the lights were out I asked Hector what was on the other side of the wall.

Hector said, “Go to sleep.”

“I can’t,” I said. “You are keeping something from me.”

Hector sat up in bed. The walls of the house were thin. He put his finger to his mouth. I could see him clearly due to the moon that spilled its light onto the bare floorboards of our room.

We carefully made our way to the attic. One candle in a jar was all the light we had. That and the moon, of course.

When we were in the attic with the ladder pulled up, I said, “What’s behind the wall?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s a lie. Why are you lying to me?”

“Look,” said Hector, “I got the ball back. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“No. Tell me what you saw.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because. Because I promised I would keep it secret.”

“Who did you promise?”

“My father,” said Hector. “I can’t break that promise.”

I was so cross with him. My feet were frozen and I thought,
frick-frack this, I’m off to bed.

“Standish,” said Hector as I got to the trap door, “don’t you want to launch the spacecraft?”

I looked at that papier-mâché rocket and said, “You think it’s only a game. You don’t believe there is a planet Juniper. You just think I made it up —”

“No, Standish, I do believe,” Hector interrupted. “I believe the best thing we have is our imagination, and you have that in bucketloads.”

We sat in our cardboard flying saucer with its ironing-board cover. Slashes of moonlight shone through the holes in the roof.

“Once we had a tall house in the city of Tyker,” Hector said quietly. “We had servants to cook and clean. Everything smelled of polish and money. It was all taken away from us and we ended up in Zone Seven.”

“Why?”

“Because of what my father did.”

“What did he do?”

Hector was silent, then he said, “Best you don’t know.”

I said that we should launch the spacecraft while there was still time. I don’t know why it came to me, but it did. I saw Hector as someone on the verge of a long journey. The thought that he might go alone was unbearable.

I woke with a sore head, my eyelids thick and heavy. I remembered that Hector and I had curled up together inside the spacecraft, imagining we saw the stars pass us by. We were on our way to Juniper when sleep overtook us. Bit by conscious bit I knew something was very wrong. I was lying on the same blanket but in an empty attic. No flying saucer. No Hector.

I went down to the kitchen. Gramps was sitting at the table, his head in his hands.

“Where’s Hector?” I asked.

Gramps said not a word. I went into every room to look for him. I couldn’t find Mr. and Mrs. Lush either. Finally, I went back to the kitchen. Gramps stood there by the teapot.

“Where is Hector?” I shouted.

Gramps put his finger to his mouth. He pointed to a piece of paper on the table. It had writing on it. His handwriting. I knew what it said. I didn’t need the written words to tell me. I knew they had been taken.

I felt the scream rise. Gramps caught hold of me and we toppled to the floor. We were both crying. Gramps held his hand firmly over my mouth.

I still have that scream in me.

Gramps pulled me to my feet. Still his hand was over my mouth. Still I could feel the scream in me. He took me outside. We stood next to the vegetable plot in the rain.

“I think the house is bugged,” was all he said.

“Why didn’t they take us too? Why?” I shouted through his fingers. The words returned to me warm, fired up with rage. There was a lump in my throat so solid it almost suffocated me.

“I don’t know,” replied Gramps. “Do you?”

“No. Yes. There was a secret. But what it was, Hector wouldn’t tell me.”

“Good,” said Gramps. “I’ll take you to school.”

“No. No, never. I am never —”

“You have to, Standish. You just have to.” He let go of me. There was nothing then to keep me standing. Nothing. Gramps’s words trailed behind him, hot air from a leaden balloon. At the back door he said, “Do it for Hector.”

I was soaked by the time I went back into the house. Gramps had the radio on, tuned to the only station that the authorities allowed us mere lava mites to listen to. Dripple for the workers of the Motherland. They sang it loud, they sang it clear:

I went upstairs and put on my school uniform. Every part of me dead. Limp. Dead.

In the kitchen, Gramps had made tea. He had broken into the bank, he’d put a fresh spoonful of tea in the infuser. That’s something we didn’t do often. Splash out, why not? After all they have taken your best friend, your brother. We sat at the kitchen table, drank our tea in silence.